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Genesis

How do we grow in discipleship? One way is by spending time with God through God’s word. That is what we are doing this year. Spending time reading Scripture together. We have chosen this plan as it reads straight through AND they have produced videos to help our understanding. In addition, they have a nice app that you can download on a smart phone or you can ask them to send you a daily e-mail. If this plan doesn’t work for you, there are many to choose from–find one!

We will connect regularly through this blog and we will reference the readings through the sermons from time to time. Don’t be discouraged. Do what you can, the videos and blog will help.

The beautiful things we find here in Genesis is that God’s chosen people are just like us–they have feelings of excitement, discouragement, and at times, feel abandoned by God, just like we do. Reading Abraham’s story gives me encouragement. He was promised by God that he would be blessed, yet the blessing did not come, and it did not come. He was required to wait, and we know how hard that waiting is. Abraham did not wait for a little while, he had to wait for a LONG time until the blessing of his son with his wife Sarah arrived. During that time of waiting, even Abraham thought that God had forgotten him. Abraham needed to hear the promise again. Yet Abraham is the one whom is the Father of the nation, he is the one to whom faith and righteousness is credited.

Some of that faith came out of the reading for today. In Genesis 22 God is called to lay down his Issac. God calls Abraham to offer up his firstborn son to God. The very one who was to carry on the family name was to be sacrificed. There is so much to say about this chapter. The real question that comes is, could I do it? Could I lay down that which is the most important to me, my children for God’s sake?

I cannot answer that question, but I can ask myself another question. Do I believe that Jesus is enough? Do I believe that Jesus will take care of my needs and provide?

Abraham believed that God would provide, and that is exactly what God did. Abraham moved out on faith-knowing that the family dynasty might come to an end before it even began-and Abraham followed God’s call.

Don’t miss the New Testament symbolism here. The very thing that God was asking of Abraham, God will do with his own son, with Jesus. Jesus will be sacrificed on the cross for all of human kind.

Is God asking you to sacrifice something from your life in this new year? It is not Issac that God wanted, it was all of Abraham, fully devoted to God, that God wanted. Is God asking you to lay down your “Issac.” Your Issac might be a habit, or a thing, or something that is more important to you than God is to you. God wants to be the most important thing in our lives. What do we need to lay aside to make God top priority? Ask God to empower you, through the Holy Spirit, to lay down that which consumes you and your time, so that you can give yourself wholly and fully to God.